ABSTRACT
Marine environment holds more than 70% of the earth’s surface and is an abundant source of new potential bioactive compounds. Recently, marine microbes have gained more attention due to their structural and functional versatility. The unique properties of metabolic and physiological adaptation under extreme condition also make them more diverse than terrestrial ones. Numerous marine microorganisms are reported for the production of biosurfactants. Biosurfactants are secondary metabolites having the amphiphilic nature. They have varying chemical structures like glycolipids, glycopeptides, glycolipopeptides, phospholipids, lipopeptides and lipopolysaccharides. Biosynthetic pathways and regulatory genes involved in these biomolecules production plays a vital role in strain improvement. Genetic engineering can be explored for genetically modified strain development. Culture-independent methods like metagenomics can be a promising approach to explore genetic resources of marine microbes for novel bioactive compounds as many of them are difficult to grow in the laboratory. The discovery of potential marine microorganisms would encourage their application in various fields like environmental bioremediation for hydrocarbon degradation, metal removal and microbial enhanced oil recovery in biomedical field their potential is observed in antimicrobial, anti-biofilm, anticancer and nanoparticle synthesis. This chapter aims to discuss the biosynthetic pathway, genes involved in biosurfactant production, metagenomics study of marine microbes. Moreover, various biotechnological applications of biosurfactant in the field of environmental bioremediation and medical are summarized.
